I wonder how many people are as weary as I am of hearing Japan moaning about World War II. Now the Japanese don't like the postage stamp we are putting out. This was the last straw for me.
Not withstanding the fact that the stamp itself might be in poor taste, the fact remains, Japan started it and we finished it.I am reminded of the British who complained that our forces were not fighting like they did, in a straight line, wearing red coats. I am also reminded of one of Japan's great naval heroes commenting, when he heard of Pearl Harbor, "I am afraid we have awakened a sleeping giant."
Being only 12 years of age in 1941, I recall all too vividly my brother serving in the forces to defend our country, my mother's tears, our worries, and our prayers. I also recall that many of my brother's happy-go-lucky, handsome friends did not return because of battle in Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Corregidor.
To be sure, the atomic bomb was a terrible, horrible force, and what happened should not have happened at all. We're not talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki only, We're talking about the war itself. Japan lied when it talked peace in Washington, it lied when it said it had not used women of conquered countries for the pleasure of its soldiers, and now it's trying to tell us how unfair we have been.
Tell it to the people of Manchuria! Tell it to the thousands of men, women and children put into camps and tortured because it was disgraceful for people to surrender. Tell it to General Wainwright and the hundreds of thousands of Allied men and women who suffered in camps. But don't try to tell those of us who remember those days, and teach our children not to forget. Forgive,
yes . . . forget, never!
We must cry, as do the survivors of the Holocaust, "Never again!"
B. Gene Gonzalez
Salt Lake City